Fishing for public-private greenery, east of the freeway

Ryan Frank reports in Friday's Oregonian on an initiative led by city council member Nick Fish to bring more public greenspace and parks to portions of the city east of Interstate 205 currently underserved. The intent is to do so by leveraging public-private partnerships like the city has done in the central urban core.

This spring, Fish will propose $1 million in seed money be provided for a campaign called E205. "Fish hopes to pair that money with donations from the wealthy West Hills crowd," Frank explains. "Parks planners are still looking at where they would target the spending. But they will most likely focus the projects on land already owned by government agencies, such as schools, or vacant parcels owned by the Bureau of Parks & Recreation. The projects are supposed to be an interim step until the Parks Bureau can get voters to approve a large bond measure, possibly as soon as 2012."

The model here is Director Park, for which two affluent Portland families — the Schnitzers and the Moyers — contributed a total of $9.1 million, which was then paired with $6.4 million in city funds to "tear up a parking lot and replace it with honey-colored granite pavers," as Frank puts it. But it's important to also remember that Director Park was also underwritten by the fact that the garage from the adjacent Moyer-developed Fox Tower could be expanded underneath it. A continuous revenue stream from parking receipts may have helped prompt that philanthropy, admirable as it is.

Even so, it's also a mistake to be cynical about such public-private partnerships. This will likely be a major theme in the upcoming Rose Quarter makeover, for example: how the city can leverage its land surrounding and including Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Garden with high density private development without sacrificing too much in the way of design quality, public benefits and the right cultural fit.

If the E205 effort does succeed in attracting investment from the "wealthy West Hills crowd" mentioned in Frank's story through mere altruism and not as a quasi investment opportunity, it could be a tremendous benefit to a largely lower-income area of the city. There is a substantial difference between the collection of bioswales, fountains, parks and greenspaces in the central city and that in these outer neighborhoods, more so even than in similarly lower income demographic areas of Portland. Much of this territory was only annexed to the Rose City in the 1980s, and they feel like a kind of netherworld between Portland proper and eastern suburbs like Gresham. Sidewalks are shamefully rare here too - not just parks. If I lived in far east Portland, I'd be seeking a commitment from the Portland Department of Transportation as much as from the Bureau of Parks & Recreation. That said, perhaps additions such as the new MAX line extending from Gateway to Clackamas Town Center will begin to make these places more walkable and pedestrian friendly - more like Portland.

Yet there are interesting and sizable opportunities to let the greenery in east Portland sprout, places like Parklane Park at Southeast 155th Avenue and Main Street. It was initially a five-acre land parcel acquired in 1993 as a transfer from Multnomah County and its amenities include basketball courts, walking paths, a playground, soccer field, and softball field. That could just be a start, because three additional parcels, totaling about 20 acres, were purchased from Oregon Asphaltic Paving in 2001 and 2002 and are not yet developed or available for public use. With the right public-private partnership, that could change.

Although it may be naive to assume that individual donors will provide enough private funds, perhaps there is indeed a way to expand that to include corporate fundraising or even trading a small fraction of property for private development rights. It's not always an easy situation to handle. The phrase public-private partnership sounds so nicely cooperative and efficient, yet these endeavors must negotiate a lot of ambiguous decisions about just how to jumpstart and fund the process without something important being lost along the way.

It's all worth figuring out, of course, and doable, if for no other reason than that city dwellers should always be able to feel their feet on grass. The larger and more ultimately relevant conversation here, beyond issues of funding or property or government, is one of breaking down the barriers between urban and natural spaces. It's something architecture can help with, but retaining space and reverence for unpaved, flora and fauna-friendly landscape.

Comments

E205 sounds PERFECT for outer East Portland! Thanks so much for sharing this idea, Brian, and especially for your great ideas on how we can make this work! We need that area's collective quality of life and access to nature to increase substantially...

The last time that East Portland got the new city parks attention it needed was after the World War II influx of new residents. There are few places in Portland that deserve this consideration more than the area east of 205. Recent open space needs assessments point to the E205 area as lacking in some basic parks infrastructure needs at the same time this area of Portland is growing in population as Portland pushes the toward the city limits at East 181st Avenue.
With this in mind the current efforts on the part of Commissioner Fish are long overdue but very welcome however, E205 parks and the recent expansion of parks in downtown Portland are two different animals from a development opportunities perspective.
Director, Jamison, Tanner Springs the forthcoming “Fields” in the Pearl and the new site for the Saturday Market and the Neighborhood Park in South Waterfront are all in urban renewal areas and were funded, in part, with TIFF dollars from PDC. While private development donations were solicited by the Portland Parks Foundation for Director and the fountain at the Saturday Market site, no such funding sources are extant in E205 in terms of an urban renewal “angel” and it appears that the Foundation is no longer in the acquisitions and development business. The one recent exception to this funding model was the acquisition and development of Holly Farm off of Capital Highway in SE Portland. Holly Farm may be a better model than Director Park for E205.
In this case the City applied for and received acquisition dollars from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department as part of its lottery funded local government pass-through for parks and additional funds came from donations to the Portland Parks Foundation and many hours of volunteer time by local landscape and architectural firms. The same funds that the city received from the state are once again available with the recent passage of Measure 66 for Water, Parks and Open Spaces. If a new model for parks in the E205 area is to be grown, Holly Farm is a good indicator for future success and under the vision and leadership of the parks commissioner I’m confident this will be achieved.